I have a cat! I’ve had her for a while. She kind of imposed herself on me when
I saw her on the street one day when she was a one-month-old stray kitten (we
have a lot of those here), and her eyes were closed, so I figured I’d take her
home for a few minutes, wipe her eyes open and release her again, sight restored
and able to fend for herself.

When I wiped the gunk away, it turned out she had no eyes! She had tricked me,
and I couldn’t leave her on the street to die, so now I’m responsible for a damn
cat. Apparently, cats can get chlamydia (did you know that? I didn’t), which can
cause macular degeneration (did you know that means the eye literally melts?
I didn’t), which she had.

She also had epilepsy, because of course no good deed goes unpunished. This is
her:

My stupid blind cat

She doesn’t photograph well, due to the fact that she’s pitch black and no
detail stands out at all. Also because she has no eyes and has two disgusting
fleshy holes where the eyes should be. Actually, it’s mostly because of the
second thing.

Anyway, the other cats in the playground made fun of her condition, and the
doctor said her eyes were unlikely to grow back (I’m not joking, he really did
say that. I wonder what else people ask him about), so I decided to do something
about it. If she wouldn’t grow her own eyes, I’d grow her a pair.

The first step was to locate a pair of suitable eyes:

The donor eyes

After finding a genetic match, there are the logistics of how to actually
implant the ocular tissue on the feline. As you know, cats are very
self-conscious, and hate it when you give them mismatched accessories,
immediately taking them off and possibly pooping on them. My cat is no slouch in
that department either, despite her slight total blindness, so I would have to
figure out a way to actually keep the eyes on her.

Obviously, before designing anything, we need to measure twice, so I took her
for a quick fitting. Apparently doctors’ coats have changed significantly since
the last vet visit:

The eyes are a perfect fit

After coming up with a way to keep the eyes on the cat which involved a stapler,
dismissing the plan as too cruel and then briefly entertaining the thought
again, dismissing it once more as requiring more stapler than I own, I decided
to fire up my CAD software and design some stuff. I usually use Fusion 360, but
Autodesk sucks and don’t make it for Linux, so OnShape was a very good second
choice.

A method and apparatus for installing eyes on a cat

What cat wouldn’t want to wear a pair of stylish, hipster glasses? All of them,
because cats are assholes, but we didn’t create a global communications network
to let cats use us as a conduit for sharing their photos with other cats,
effectively using us as their social network, so this cat was going to wear
these glasses.

Since I have spent more than four hours designing things with CAD software,
getting the glasses done was a breeze. A quick print later, and voila:

So professional

My latest creation, glasses-with-embedded-eyes-for-blind-cats. I call them…
eyeglasses. I will probably be creating and selling more than three pairs to
many lucky people. If you want a pair, like and share this post wherever things
are shared so more people will see them and you will automatically enter the
contest where you can win the pair you see above, which comes with a free blind
cat.

Since there’s not really much material in these glasses, they printed quite
quickly. Two minutes later, the cat was wearing them, and three hours later she
was wearing them for long enough that I could sneak a photo:

Can you tell this cat actually has no eyes? I didn't think so.

There. The cat no longer looks like it’s blind, I no longer have to gaze deep
into its black eyeholes, and everyone is happy. Of course, this only lasted
three seconds before the cat took the glasses off again, but nobody can take
that bespectacled memory away from me now.

If you liked this post, please share it with your friends. If you want to order
a pair of these glasses, or would like me to put them on Thingiverse or
something so you can attempt your own misguided foolishness, or if you want to
tell me how I’m cruel for making glasses for my cat, please leave a comment
below or tweet to me.

Since you read so far, here’s a bonus photo of the cat wearing the unfinished
prototype glasses. They may look menacing, but they’re armless:

You can tell this cat enjoys reading, because of the near-sightedness

P.S. No animals were hurt or severely inconvenienced in the making of this post.
Except maybe my cat.

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